Vive Le Cage

If you live in the Los Angeles area, you may have noticed, placed surreptitiously between two boutiquey enterprises on Silver Lake Boulevard, a colossal white cage with a twisting skeleton and seemingly organic outgrowth. It takes a moment to process this alien invasion of the everyday space, and much longer to decide what purpose, exactly, the unorthodox form serves.

Well, just to clear things up, two weeks ago it was an observatory, last week it became an architectural musical instrument, and this weekend it will serve as an immersive human-scale birdcage. Yes, you’re looking at the three-dimensional stage of “Vive La Cage,” a three-part performance series that combines elements of dance, architecture, music, astronomy, and, well, human birdwatching.

This weekend, Mishal Hashmi, Janie Sanchez and Filipa Valente collaborate on “Birdcage Express,” a piece that magnifies the daily happenings of a birdcage to a human scale. An immersive 3D projection environment invites viewers to engage with birds on a surreal scale.

“The project was inspired by the form work and scale of La Cage,” the artists explained to The Huffington Post. “We saw this giant Tweety-bird-esque cage and were drawn to the idea of creating a playful, immersive environment that allowed shrunken humans to navigate through a cage full of enormous birds and perch amongst them.”